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Monday, July 9, 2012

Buddhism by Numbers: 3 Characteristics

Central to understanding the Dharma, the way things are, is to comprehend and experience the three characteristics (tilakkhana). The three characteristics are common to all phenomena, and as such are the inherent attributes that when fully understood lead to the ultimate goal of Buddhism that is called nirvana. In the Dhammapada, a very popular collection of sayings from the Buddhist Scriptures, it is said that:

“All conditioned things are impermanent.

When one sees this with wisdom,

One turns away from suffering.

This is the path to purification.

All conditioned things are unsatisfactory.

When one sees this with wisdom,

One turns away from suffering.

This is the path to purification.

All things are not self.

When one sees this with wisdom,

One turns away from suffering.

This is the path to purification.”

(Dhammapada, verses 277-279)

By purification is meant the realization of enlightenment, which involves a pure clarity of mind as well as taintless moral behavior. Worth noting is that only conditioned things are impermanent (anicca) and unsatisfactory (dukkha), whereas conditioned things and the unconditioned (asankhata, another name for nirvana) are not self (anatta). This reveals two important aspects of the tilakkhana. Firstly, that everything is not self, the central and unique teaching of Buddhism, and secondly that while created things are ephemeral and imperfect, the uncreated (akata) is eternal (amata, literally ‘deathless’) and true happiness (sukha – the opposite of dukkha).*

Every morning in Thai monasteries, the three characteristics are recited as part of the daily chanting routine. Dukkha is applied to many aspects of life: birth, aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, despair, association with the disliked, separation from what is liked, and not attaining one’s wishes. A pretty comprehensive list! This may seem to be a rather negative attitude to life, but Buddhists would counter that it’s simply seeing life for what it is. It’s being realistic. What’s more, the realization of the reality of dukkha enables us to adjust our lives so that we increase our levels of happiness that are based not on the desire for this or that, but on accepting the way things are.

The morning chant goes on to give further causes of suffering: our misidentification with various elements of being as making up a self. These 5 aggregates of clinging (pancupadanakkhandha) are identification with the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. All five of these are natural, impersonal processes, they are not a self, but it is the delusion that they comprise a self that’s the ultimate reason that we cling to our desires and suffer. The same chant goes on to declare that all of the Five Aggregates are impermanent and not self, which is why true happiness is to found in seeing the way things are, and realizing nirvana.

Meditating on these themes with a pure, undistracted mind leads to the experience of awakening (bodhi), that the Buddha himself experienced over two thousand years ago. I hope that we might have the same revelation ourselves, transcending this world of impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless phenomena.